The International Anthony Burgess Foundation Podcast Channel hosts two podcasts:
The International Anthony Burgess Foundation Podcast is dedicated to exploring the life and work of Anthony Burgess and his contemporaries, and the cultural environment in which Burgess was working. A combination of scripted episodes, interviews and lectures, this series is a resource for students, readers and anyone else interested in twentieth century literature, film and music. The International Anthony Burgess Foundation Podcast includes episodes on A Clockwork Orange and other novels written by Burgess, the influence of James Joyce, literary dystopias and utopias, and Burgess’s musical compositions among many other themes and topics.
The Ninety-Nine Novels Podcast delves into Anthony Burgess's 1984 survey of twentieth century literature, Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English Since 1939. The book is a personal, and somewhat idiosyncratic, selection of Burgess’s favourite novels, and not only stimulates debate but acts as a crash-course in the literature that inspired and influenced Burgess throughout his career. The Ninety-Nine Novels Podcast invites experts to illuminate Burgess’s choices, and includes episodes on famous masterworks to unjustly forgotten gems.
Ninety-Nine Novels: The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
mercredi 20 novembre 2024 • Durée 49:35
In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.
In this episode, writer and academic Sarah Graham leads Graham Foster through the 1940s Manhattan of The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.
Published in 1951, The Catcher in the Rye follows Holden Caulfield, a bereaved teenager who recalls a weekend spent in Manhattan after he is expelled from boarding school. As he tells his story of wandering the streets looking for some form of connection in seedy hotels, bars, and nightclubs, he gradually reveals his own state of mind and his desire to rebel against the society that he doesn’t understand.
J.D. Salinger was born in New York in 1919. After participating in some of the most consequential battles of World War II, he began writing short stories for the New Yorker, many of which centred around the Glass family. After publishing the short story collections Nine Stories (1953) and Franny and Zooey (1961), and the volume of two novellas Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963), he retired from public life. He died in 2010.
Sarah Graham is Associate Professor in American Literature at the University of Leicester. Her most recent publications are A History of the Bildungsroman (CUP, 2019) and reviews of American fiction for the Times Literary Supplement. She published a reader’s guide to The Catcher in the Rye in 2007 (Continuum), edited a collection of essays on the novel for Routledge (2007), and has contributed to magazines, conferences and programmes discussing Salinger’s work, including ‘J. D. Salinger: Made in England’ for BBC Radio 4.
-----
BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
By J.D. Salinger:
Nine Stories (1953)
By others:
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (1850)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (1884)
The Kit Book for Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines (1943)
The theme music for the Ninety-Nine Novels podcast is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, performed by No Dice Collective.
Ninety-Nine Novels: Life in the West by Brian Aldiss
mercredi 13 novembre 2024 • Durée 54:10
In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.
In this episode, we’re joined by novelist Adam Roberts, who introduces us to Life in the West by Brian Aldiss.
Life in the West tells the story of Thomas Squire, a filmmaker who is attending an academic conference to introduce his new documentary, Frankenstein in the Arts. At the conference he engages in conversations with the other attendees while dealing with the dissolution of his marriage, the trauma of his childhood and the violent years he spent in Yugoslavia as a member of British intelligence. Anthony Burgess calls the novel ‘a rich book, not afraid of thought.’
Brain Aldiss was born in 1925. After serving in Burma during World War II he worked as a bookseller in Oxford, which was the inspiration for his first novel The Brightfount Diaries, published in 1955. He went on to become one of the most respected British science fiction writers, writing 41 novels, 26 collections of short stories, 8 volumes of poetry, 5 volumes of autobiography and many more works of literary criticism, drama and edited anthologies. He died in 2017 at the age of 92.
Adam Roberts is a writer and an academic at Royal Holloway, University of London. His most recent novel, Lake of Darkness is available now. A History of Fantasy is forthcoming from Bloomsbury (2025).
-----
BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
By Brian Aldiss:
Hothouse (1962)
Greybeard (1964)
Billion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction (1973)
Frankenstein Unbound (1973)
Helliconia Trilogy (1982-85)
A Clockwork Orange: The Prophecy – The Making of the Documentary Film
mercredi 14 février 2024 • Durée 33:15
In this episode, Andrew Biswell exploring the making of the new documentary film, A Clockwork Orange: The Prophecy, with the directors Elisa Mantin and Benoit Felici.
A Clockwork Orange: The Prophecy, is the first new documentary to focus on Burgess for 25 years. Drawing on archive footage, startling new animations, and interviews with major cultural figures such as Will Self and Ai Weiwei, this documentary reconsiders the 60-year history of A Clockwork Orange as a novel, film, stage play and cultural influence.
Christmas Special: Anthony Burgess Reads A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
mercredi 20 décembre 2023 • Durée 01:02:29
In this episode, we hand the microphone over to Anthony Burgess himself, as he gives a special festive reading of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all of our listeners! We'll be back in 2024 with more podcasts.
In this episode, we’re exploring a parallel universe Glasgow as we talk about Alasdair Gray’s Lanark with writer and biographer Rodge Glass.
Lanark is a strange, experimental book that immediately thrusts the reader into a weird world with glimmers of familiarity. It’s a novel with two stories, that weave around each other but don’t quite come together in an obvious way. It begins with the story of a man called Lanark, whose lonely existence in the city of Unthank is eventually disturbed when his skin begins to grow dragon scales. This story is interrupted by that of Duncan Thaw, who remembers his journey to become an artist, studying at the Glasgow School of Art and struggling to get by painting murals around the city. What, if anything, is the connection between Thaw and Lanark?
Alasdair Gray was born in Riddrie, Glasgow in 1934. He began studying at the Glasgow School of Art in 1953, where he started writing Lanark. He graduated in 1957 and painted murals around Glasgow. Many of his murals have been lost, but some can still be seen around the city. Most famously, his mural at the Òran Mór theatre is the largest public artwork in Scotland. Alongside his career as an artist he wrote nine novels, five collections of short stories, and several works for the theatre. He died in 2019.
Rodge Glass is the author of seven published books across fiction, the graphic novel, the short story and nonfiction, including Alasdair Gray: A Secretary's Biography, which won a Somerset Maugham Award for Nonfiction, and his new book Michel Faber: The Writer & his Work, published by Liverpool University Press in August 2023. He is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow and was the Convener of the 2nd International Alasdair Gray Conference hosted in Glasgow in 2022. He works closely with the Alasdair Gray Archive on creative commissions, academic work and on building Gray's legacy internationally.
-----
BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
By Alasdair Gray:
'The Star' in Unlikely Stories, Mostly (1983)
1982, Janine (1984)
Ninety-Nine Novels: Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
mercredi 8 novembre 2023 • Durée 58:17
In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.
In this episode, Graham Foster explores pre-civil rights America in Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel Invisible Man, with writer and academic Sterling L. Bland Jr.
Invisible Man follows a nameless black narrator, from his early life as a student of an all-black college based on the Tuskegee Institute, through his expulsion and move to New York where he takes up a series of low status jobs before he falls in with a radical political group called The Brotherhood and takes part in a race riot in Harlem. The novel is part bildungsroman, part satire, and full of literary allusion, allegory and rich imagery. It’s also an impassioned commentary on the black experience in an America marked by segregation, inequality and racism.
Ralph Ellison was born in Oklahoma in 1914. He discovered the power of literature at the Tuskegee Institute, even though he left before graduating. In 1936, he moved to New York, meeting writers Langston Hughes and Richard Wright. Invisible Man was the only novel published in his lifetime, though he also published two volumes of essays. Since his death in 1994, his second, unfinished, novel was published in 1999 under the title Juneteenth. A longer version of this novel was published in 2010 under the title Three Days Before the Shooting… There have also been two further volumes of essays, a collection of short stories, and two selections of his letters.
Sterling Lecater Bland, Jr. is a professor in the departments of English, Africana Studies, and American Studies at Rutgers University-Newark. He is the author of Voices of the Fugitives: Runaway Slave Stories and Their Fictions of Self-Creation and Understanding Nineteenth Century Slave Narratives. He has written extensively about Ralph Ellison and contributed essays to books such as Approaches to Teaching the Works of Ralph Ellison, and Ralph Ellison in Context. His most recent book is In the Shadow of Invisibility: Ralph Ellison and the Promise of American Democracy.
Ninety-Nine Novels: A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell
mercredi 1 novembre 2023 • Durée 48:16
In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.
In this episode, Will Carr explores the world of Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time with writer and academic Nicholas Birns.
A Dance to the Music of Time is a twelve-volume roman-fleuve following fifty years in the life of the narrator Nick Jenkins from his schooldays in the 1920s through the Second World War to his later years at the beginning of the 1970s.
Anthony Powell was born in Westminster, London in 1905. As well as the twelve volumes of A Dance to the Music of Time, he wrote seven further novels, four volumes of memoir, several plays and various works of non-fiction. He died in 2000, aged 94.
Nicholas Birns is on the faculty of New York University, where he teaches contemporary world literature in English. His most recent book is The Cambridge Companion to the Australian Novel which he co-edited with Louis Klee. His first book Understanding Anthony Powell appeared in 2004 and he is a founding member of the Anthony Powell Society.
-----
BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (1850)
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (1867)
The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy (1906-21)
Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust (1913-27)
Ulysses by James Joyce (1922)
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh (1928)
Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh (1930)
Ninety-Nine Novels: The Aerodrome by Rex Warner
mercredi 25 octobre 2023 • Durée 50:11
In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.
In this episode, Graham Foster assesses the dystopian threats of Rex Warner's 1942 novel The Aerodrome. Writer and academic Joseph Darlington guides us through Warner’s politics, his representations of England and whether or not the novel is truly a dystopia.
The Aerodrome is set in a nameless but idyllic rural village, where the inhabitants live rough but blameless lives attending church, frequenting the pub and enjoying village fetes. But on a hill overlooking the village, a mysterious militaristic aerodrome has been constructed, and threatens to overwhelm the entire countryside. Our hero Roy, disillusioned with village life, attempts to resist the lure of the Air-Vice Marshall, a charismatic leader who promises order and excitement.
Rex Warner was born in Birmingham in 1905, and was a renowned classicist, writer, poet and translator. He attended Wadham College, Oxford, where he became friends with W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis. During the 1930s he developed strong anti-fascist beliefs, something reflected in his first three novels: The Wild Goose Chase, The Professor, and The Aerodrome. He wrote seven further novels, three books of poetry, and many volumes of non-fiction including translations from Ancient Greek and Latin. His translation of Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War for Penguin Classics sold over a million copies, and is still in print today. He died in 1973.
Joseph Darlington is the author of The Experimentalists,published by Bloomsbury, a collective biography of British experimental novelists of the 1960s. He is also the author of the novel The Girl Beneath the Ice, published by Northodox, and the co-editor of the Manchester Review of Books.
--------
BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
By Rex Warner:
Ninety-Nine Novels: Falstaff by Robert Nye
mercredi 18 octobre 2023 • Durée 53:29
In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.
In this episode, we’re discussing the bawdy, gluttonous and flatulent Falstaff by Robert Nye, with writer and academic, Rob Spence.
Falstaff is a masterpiece of obscene excess. Telling the story of the medieval knight Sir John Fastolf, reportedly the model for Shakespeare’s famous rake Falstaff, Nye’s novel is split into 100 chapters, and goes from Fastolf’s conception on the penis of the Cerne Abbas Giant to his death at the age of 81. It’s a novel Burgess calls Rabelaisian, saying it is a ‘bold venture and an indication of what the novel can do when it frees itself from the constraints of the Jamesian tradition.’
Robert Nye was an award-winning poet, novelist and critic, whose work was often inspired by his deep knowledge and love of literature. As a novelist, his work includes novels about Merlin, Faust, Lord Byron, and the companion-in-arms of Joan of Arc, Gilles de Rais. Born in London, he settled in Cork, Ireland, where he died in 2016.
Rob Spence is a retired academic. He has published on a range of modern and contemporary authors, including Anthony Burgess, Robert Nye, Ford Madox Ford, Louis de Bernieres, Wyndham Lewis and Penelope Fitzgerald.
-----
BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
By Robert Nye:
Beowulf: A New Telling (1968)
Merlin (1978)
Faust (1980)
The Memoirs of Lord Byron (1989)
The Life and Death of My Lord Gilles de Rais (1990)
By others:
Ninety-Nine Novels: A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood
mercredi 11 octobre 2023 • Durée 48:14
In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.
In this episode, Andrew Biswell explores Christopher Isherwood’s 1964 novel A Single Man. Guiding him through the novel is Isherwood's authorised biographer and editor of his letters and diaries, Katherine Bucknell.
A Single Man tells the story of George, an English professor living in suburban Los Angeles and grieving the death of his lover, Jim. Set over one day, the novel is a deeply moving study of grief and a sensitive portrait of the aftermath of a committed gay relationship, published at a time when notions such as same-sex marriage were controversial and prohibited by law.
Christopher Isherwood was born near Stockport, England, in 1904. In 1929, he travelled to Berlin with W.H. Auden, which provided material for a sequence of novels, most notably Goodbye to Berlin, which was the basis for the hit musical Cabaret. Isherwood emigrated to the United States in 1939, first to New York with Auden, and then to California. In 1953, he met Don Bachardy and they formed a lifelong relationship. Isherwood died in 1986.
Katherine Bucknell is a biographer, editor and novelist. She has edited three volumes of Isherwood’s diaries, and The Animals, a volume of letters between Isherwood and Bachardy, which is also the basis of a podcast hosted by Katherine. Her novels include Leninsky Prospekt, Canarino, What You Will, and +1. She is the founder of the W.H. Auden Society and the director of the Christopher Isherwood Foundation. She is currently working on a major new biography of Christopher Isherwood.
------
BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
By Christopher Isherwood:
Goodbye to Berlin (1939)
Prater Violet (1945)
Trillion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction (1986)
Forgotten Life (1988)
Bury My Heart at W.H. Smith's: A Writing Life (1990)
Remembrance Day (1993)
Twinkling of an Eye, or My Life as an Englishman (1998)
Somewhere East of Life (1994)
'Supertoys Last All Summer Long' in The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s Part 2 (2015)
The theme music for the Ninety-Nine Novels podcast is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, performed by No Dice Collective.
The theme music for the Ninety-Nine Novels podcast is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, performed by No Dice Collective.
-----
If you’ve enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe and review wherever you get your podcasts.
Découvrez des podcasts liées à The International Anthony Burgess Foundation Podcast. Explorez des podcasts avec des thèmes, sujets, et formats similaires. Ces similarités sont calculées grâce à des données tangibles, pas d'extrapolations !
